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Winter: Viagra and Camaros

By Mary Winter

Posted:
12/19/2010 01:00:00 AM MST

My favorite TV ad these days is the Viagra one that opens on a dark two-lane highway in the desert. A 1969 Camaro SS appears over a hill as a bluesy guitar riff splits the air and we see a graying hottie with rough hands behind the wheel, a mix of Steve McQueen in "Junior Bonner" and Tommy Lee Jones in "No Country for Old Men."

A guy who could take a rattlesnake like Javier Bardem, remove his liver and fry it up on the radiator for breakfast.

Although that's not in fact what's producing the clouds of white steam under his hood. Our hero has a busted radiator, and I don't care if you're Clint Eastwood himself, it's a bad day at the rodeo when your 40-year-old pony car breaks down in a God-forsaken caliche patch 200 miles from the nearest Sears Automotive Center.

But Mr. Viagra doesn't break a sweat. And that's because, as the Pfizer narrator informs, he's "at an age where you don't get thrown by curve balls." Our hero simply cruises into a broken down service station, grabs a plastic water bottle from the convenient cooler, pours it into his ailing radiator and off he sails.

But not without — and I love this little flourish — wiping his hands against each other in an exaggerated gesture of job-well-done, the universal language of manhood that says "I've bagged another pelt."

When it comes to immersing viewers in complete fantasy for 30 seconds, this ad knocks it out of the park: Freedom of the open road, power under the hood, squared shoulders, rugged individualism, wide open spaces, earthy music that channels your animal nature, American know-how, resourcefulness, success in the face of overwhelming odds.

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The small strokes are what make this ad so artful — the dawn lighting, the look of awe of the wrinkled, old proprietor's face as he watches Mr. Viagra perform his miracle on the desert.

And that miracle is also what I love. Resuscitating the modified 350 cid V8 in this little Chevy by giving it 10 ounces of Evian spring water is really not one for the books, is it? How impressed should we be that this guy can open a bottle of water and find the right hole to pour it in? From his air of self-satisfaction, you'd think he'd installed a turbine in the bottom of Hoover Dam.

Call me cynical, but when the voice-over says, "This is the age of taking action," my bar is set just a bit higher. And not to go all feminist on anyone, but I find it interesting that the female version of Viagra — a product called Zestra — still can't advertise on most television stations, apparently because erections lasting four hours are acceptable prime-time conversation, but allusions to female sexual desire are not.

You may have seen the story on ABC's "Nightline" this fall: two female entrepreneurs in California developed a botanical-oil-based product that in clinical trials was 70 percent effective in enhancing women's sexual satisfaction, according to Zestra's makers.

Now, you would not know it from the $300-million annual ad campaign for erection-enhancing ads for Viagra, Cialis and Levitra, but women suffer more sexual dysfunction than men do — 43 percent to 31 percent, according to the Journal of the American Medical Association.

In other words, the potential market for flagging female libidos is huge. But here's the irony: When the makers of Zestra went to 100 television networks and stations to buy ads, the vast majority refused them. The few stations that did take their money would run the ads only after midnight or during the daytime.

The stations "told us they were not comfortable airing the ads," Zestra co-founder Mary Jaensch told "Nightline." The double-standard here — men, you deserve sexual pleasure, and women, what's wrong with you hussies? — is breathtaking.

So how about this ad: a Camaro, a woman, and a vibrating driver's seat?

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